Media News

Morning Media Newsfeed 11.27.12

Fox News Pulls Plug on Interview After Guest Criticizes Network (TVNewser) Veteran defense reporter Tom Ricks (who was on CNN's Reliable Sources Sunday to talk about coverage of General Petraeus) had an interview on Fox News cut short after he criticized the channel on-air. HuffPost Co-anchor Jon Scott asked Ricks to weigh in on the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and Sen. John McCain's criticisms of Amb. Susan Rice. "I think Benghazi was generally hyped by this network especially," Ricks said. He added that he thought McCain seemed to be "backing off" from criticizing Rice since "the campaign [was] over." NYT / Media Decoder The strange and unusually short interview segment quickly gained the attention of media critics, because criticism of Fox News is rarely aired on Fox News. Ricks said in an email message afterward that he did not think he was being rude. "I thought I was being honest," he said. "They asked my opinion, and I gave it." Politico / Dylan Byers on Media "I had told the producer before I went on that I thought the Benghazi story had been hyped. So it should have been no surprise when I said it and the anchor pushed back that I defended my view," Ricks told Politico in an email. Slate / The Slatest It's one thing to cut off a man-on-the-street type interview that goes off course. It's quite another to do it to someone who you've brought on specifically to speak in the role of expert, especially when said reporter is responding directly to the questions being asked of him. THR Michael Clemente, executive vice president, news editorial at FNC, tells The Hollywood Reporter that Ricks dodged Scott's question ("When you have four people dead, including the first U.N. ambassador in more than 30 years, how do you call that 'hype'?"). "When Mr. Ricks ignored the anchor's question, it became clear that his goal was to bring attention to himself -- and his book," Clemente said in an email to THR. "He apologized in our offices afterward but doesn't have the strength of character to do that publicly.

Zero Dark Thirty: Bin Laden Manhunt Film Based on Controversial First-Hand Accounts (ABC Nightline) It was the greatest manhunt of all time, the stealthy nighttime raid by the elite SEAL Team Six on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan, which led to the death of the world's most wanted terrorist leader. It is the subject of Zero Dark Thirty, a riveting new film by director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, both of Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker fame. Variety / Wilshire & Washington Boal and Bigelow, the duo behind the upcoming Zero Dark Thirty, deny that they received any classified information to make the movie about the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Deadline / Hollywood The pair told ABC News' Martha Raddatz that claims they received top-secret help from the Obama administration on the details of the raid came down to partisan politics. "I certainly did a lot of homework, but I never asked for classified materials; to my knowledge, I never received any," Boal said. Chicago Tribune / Reuters "It was all based on first-hand accounts so it really felt very vivid and very vital and very, very immediate and visceral of course which is very exciting as a filmmaker," Bigelow told ABC News in an interview that aired on Monday. HuffPost In August of 2011, Republican representative Peter King wrote a letter to the Department of Defense and the CIA urging an investigation into how much the Obama administration had supported Boal in his research.

Can Oprah Maintain Her Empire Without a Talk Show? (NYT / Media Decoder) Christine Haughney discusses her article about Oprah Winfrey's recent struggles to manage her media holdings with Amy Chozick, corporate media reporter, and David Gillen, deputy business editor. Without the platform of a daily talk show, Winfrey has found it hard to keep up the same level of interest in her magazine, cable network and satellite radio channel. HuffPost Oprah had a recent breast cancer scare and may shut down her magazine if it starts losing money, The New York Times revealed on Monday. The former talk show queen has recently been putting all of her energy into OWN, her cable network. (Among other things, she has launched a partnership with The Huffington Post.) Now, things are looking up at OWN. With ratings climbing, Oprah has taken to saying the network has "made the pivot" to a more successful future. Chicago Sun-Times / AP Oprah Winfrey told fellow veteran television show host David Letterman on Monday that victims of physical and verbal abuse spend years rebuilding their self-esteem. The media mogul recounted her own experiences with abuse, which included being raped at age nine, during an appearance at Ball State University, part of a lecture series Letterman sponsors at his alma mater. Ball State University's The Daily Through all of the pain and struggle, Winfrey triumphed. She was thankful, she said, for everything that had happened. "I would take nothing from my journey," she said. Winfrey remained humble when Letterman told her he was impressed with her life. "You understand that this is stunning," he said. "Your human existence is stunning." "I never thought of my life as stunning," she replied. "It's just my life."

Online Buying is Really Clicking (The Columbus Dispatch) The evolution of holiday shopping continued Monday, as Cyber Monday became less of an event and more of a steppingstone along the retail road to Christmas. It was an important and lucrative day, however. Online shopping was up 26 percent compared with Cyber Monday a year ago, according to figures by IBM Benchmark. Sales from mobile devices, including tablets, rose 12 percent. NY Post / AP Shoppers are expected to have spent $1.5 billion on Cyber Monday, up 20 percent from last year, according to research firm comScore. That would not only make it the biggest online shopping day of the year, but the biggest since comScore started tracking shoppers' online buying habits in 2001. Yahoo! News / Reuters PayPal, the payments division of eBay, said the volume of mobile transactions it processed by 2 p.m. ET on Cyber Monday almost tripled versus the same period last year. AppNewser IBM's Benchmark Cyber Monday report found that the iPhone is driving more retail shopping than other mobile devices. iPhone traffic to retail stores websites Monday represented 8.7 percent, whereas only 7.2 percent of traffic came from the iPad and only 6.3 percent came from Android devices. The report also found .2 percent of all online sales on Cyber Monday came through social networking referrals.

Morning Show Ratings: Week of November 12 (TVNewser)Good Morning America wins another week in the mornings, and is now poised to win the November Sweep. It would be GMA's first November sweeps win in 17 years and the show's first win in any sweeps month in adult 25-54 viewers in more than 18 years -- since July 1994. B&CGMA is averaging 5.35 million total viewers and 2.03 million adults 25-54 through Nov. 18, while NBC's Today is averaging 4.89 million total viewers and 1.99 million in the demo. CBS This Morning is averaging 2.79 million total viewers and 1.07 million key adults. The Wrap / The Box Once a reliable second place to NBC's dominant Today, Good Morning America has been making inroads against its rival this year -- in the last week of August, GMA posted an 18-year high versus Today, besting it in the key demo by 152,000 viewers and in total viewers by 883,000.

Privacy Groups Ask Facebook to Withdraw Proposed Policy Changes (Chicago Tribune / Reuters) Two privacy advocacy groups urged Facebook Inc on Monday to withdraw proposed changes to its terms of service that would allow the company to share user data with recently acquired photo-application Instagram, eliminate a user voting system and loosen email restrictions within the social network. Bloomberg Businessweek "These proposed changes raise privacy risks for users," the letter said. "We urge you to withdraw the proposed changes." The company, owner of the world's largest social networking website, has come under scrutiny around the world since announcing the policy revisions. TechCrunch Facebook gave users one week to review the proposal to change its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and Data Use Policy, and that period ends Tuesday morning around 10 a.m. PT. Since more than 7,000 users have commented on the changes, exceeding the threshold required to force a vote, Facebook will set up a one-week voting period in the near future.

Producer Changes at CBS This Morning(TVNewser)CBS This Morning executive producer Chris Licht has made some top producer changes at the 11-month old morning show. Brian Applegate has been named senior broadcast producer and Matthew Glick is a new senior producer overseeing guest bookings. B&C Applegate had previously been executive producer for CBS News' overnight Up to the Minute and the 4 a.m. CBS Morning News. "Brian has terrific news judgment, and now you'll see that on a bigger platform," said Licht, vice president of programming for CBS News and executive producer of CBS This Morning. "He is also a great leader and control room pro." Deadline / Hollywood Glick, who will head the morning show's booking department, most recently was a senior producer at NBC Universal in the Special Bookings unit, where he helped launch Rock Center With Brian Williams. His various roles at NBC News included supervising producer on the weekend edition of Today.

Brooke Runnette Named New President of National Geographic Television (The Wrap / The Box) Brooke Runnette, a former Discovery executive whose role included producing "Shark Week," has been named the new president of National Geographic Television. B&C As president of NGT, Runnette will oversee series, big special events and live programming for the National Geographic Channels. She had recently joined National Geographic Channels as vice president, development and special projects. Runnette came to National Geographic from Discovery Channel, where she was executive producer and director of specials, including Discovery's popular "Shark Week."

With Defiance, Comcast's Syfy Bets $100 Million on Convergence of TV and Videogames (Forbes / Mixed Media)Defiance, which makes its debut next April, is an order of magnitude larger and more complex than anything Syfy -- or any other basic cable channel -- has ever attempted, involving scores of actors and writers, dozens of programmers and no fewer than seven alien languages. If it succeeds, it will also be vastly profitable for the network's corporate parent, Comcast's NBCUniversal.

DVR Use Even Higher in Big Cities (Variety) An analysis released Monday by trade association TVB covering the first six weeks of the 2012-13 broadcast season shows that playback on DVRs in the top 25 markets is outpacing the national average by about 25 percent in adults 25-54. Time-shifting accounted for an average of 24.5 percent of all same-day viewing in Nielsen's Local People Meter markets versus 19.8 percent on the national level.

How We Read, Not What We Read, May Be Contributing to Our Information Overload (Nieman Journalism Lab) Every day, a new app or service arrives with the promise of helping people cut down on the flood of information they receive. It's the natural result of living in a time when an ever-increasing number of news providers push a constant stream of headlines at us every day. But what if it's the ways we choose to read the news -- not the glut of news providers -- that make us feel overwhelmed?

Old Media, New Tricks: Can The New York Times' R&D Lab Tech-Heads Help Save the Battered News Brand? (Adweek) With the newsroom housed 24 floors below, the seven-year-old R&D Lab acts as a tech startup of sorts inside the New York Times Co., home of the 161-year-old, self-styled newspaper of record. With 20 staffers, the lab's mix of crazy smart technologists, programmers, designers and business brains are charged with the Sisyphean task of developing tech innovations and new business models to help the struggling Times weather an uncertain future following five consecutive years of falling revenue and net losses totaling more than $300 million over seven years.

Tumblr Boasts Nearly 170 Million Monthly Visitors (SlashGear) If you use the micoblogging website Tumblr, you aren't alone. The website has had a seriously successful year and now claims to be one of the top 10 most visited sites in the United States. Tumblr recently boasted a worldwide audience of 170 million people.

Is the Internet Bad for Your Health? (SocialTimes) Bullying, sleep deprivation, and relationship stress are just a few of the dangers of spending too much time online. This infographic shows some surprising statistics on the toll the Internet has taken on our health and how much worse things could be in the future.